Hedwyg has tagged me and bade me disclose six weird things about myself. Those who know me will attest that limiting the list to six is difficult, but I did my best:
- I am 43 years old and I still cannot sleep with my hand hanging over the edge of the bed, for fear that something will grab it in the night.
- The term “liturgical dance” literally makes me shudder. (Even TYPING it makes me shudder…)
- I believe that all things necessary to salvation can be found in the poems of Emily Dickinson, Mark Jarman, and e.e. cummings. Throw in Mary Oliver, Pablo Neruda, Sharon Olds, Wendell Berry, Jane Kenyon, Rumi, and Sandra Cisneros and you’ve got a party!
- I believe it is unutterably rude to try and sell things to people—especially things they have not indicated they want. Needless to say, my career as a salesperson was short-lived…
- I am Southern—and I do not like grits, greens of any sort, or pecan pie. I also believe that people who put sugar in cornbread, or mustard in barbecue sauce, are an abomination unto the Lord.
- I have a weird prejudice, bordering on the pathological, against asking other people to do things. So although I am truly thrilled that Hedwyg tagged me, I won’t tag anyone else. The buck/meme stops here.
34 comments:
Doxy wrote, "The term “liturgical dance” literally makes me shudder."
Heh. No kidding!
Got another "shudder-worthy" one for you (at least it is for me) - Praise Music. No, not "hymns of praise" like in the 1982 Hymnal - but Christian Praise Music.
I attended an "Episcopal" parish for a time that hardly ever sang anything out of the 1982 Hymnal, but they were all over the place with the "Praise Music."
Lord preserve me, if I ever hear My God is an Awesome God again, I shall develop violent facial tics...
David, I am right there with you. For me, it's "Shine, Jesus, Shine."
SHUDDER
Great. Thank you both SOOOOO much for implanting not one, but TWO, earworms in my most impressionable mind.
God will get you for that. For instance, someone might type the Lamb Chop song into your comments one day, when you least expect it.
:-) Cool list, Doxy!
Wow, another weirdo! My only fear is that my list would be way longer... starting with shuddering at the thought of "liturgical dance".
I'm afraid I must agree on the liturgical dance issue, as well as deplorably inane "praise" music. And I love modern dance and a few alternative bands in the real world; just can't stand bad art, even in the service of the tone-deaf religious among us. Call me a snob, but I was raised in a home where being able to read music was considered an essential part of education.
David, I am right there with you. For me, it's "Shine, Jesus, Shine."
a.k.a. "Shiny, Happy Jesus" ;->
Shudder-worthy, indeed.
imagine a southerner who doesn't like pecan pie!
I was at Ole Miss in the late 80s and early 90s and there was a place in Oxford MS whose pecan pie (puh-kahn, thank you) would make anyone cry it was so good. (I haven't been back in MS for over a decade so I don't know if that place is still there). My grandmother from Kemper Co., MS, always put sugar in her cornbread, while my grandfather from Illinois insisted on sugar free cornbread.
although I agree about the whole mustard in bbq sauce thing. ugh.
Personally I think that mustard in bbq sauce is an abomination before God that those North Carolinians need to repent from. Someone should call them to return to the version of BBQ sauce that has been revealed to us from on high: Memphis dry rub.
Dennis--I'm glad to see that someone knows how to pronounce "pecan" correctly! ;-)
Also, the mustard-based BBQ sauce is a South Carolina perversion (which may well explain what's wrong with my ex-husband and Kendall Harmon and company...but I digress).
Western NC BBQ is tomato-based. Central and Eastern NC BBQ is vinegar-based, and is quite good, even to this Memphis-born and -reared girl.
As for dry-rub...well, I prefer a really HOT, tomato-based sauce. In Memphis, my favorite place is the Germantown Commissary. Cozy Corner would be another, but it was just so far away from where I lived. Corky's is the place everyone goes, and it's good---just not as good as the Commissary.
And don't even get me started on the Rendezvous. If that's your (collective "you") idea of good BBQ, you need to get out more...
oh, my, the pulled pork sandwiches at Germantown commissary. that is good. and their banana pudding was the best.
It has been almost 9 yrs since I've lived in Memphis, so I'm not totally up on all the goings on there. friends tell me that the town has really changed a lot. A company I worked for had a tent one year in the BBQ competion in May. Now that was some good bbq.
Have you ever eaten at Abe's BBQ down in Clarksdale MS in the Delta?
Have you ever eaten at Abe's BBQ down in Clarksdale MS in the Delta?
I wish! I'll put it on the list.
As a side note, maybe we should do the progressive blogger's convention in Memphis or New Orleans? ;-)
boy this conversation has me missing some of the south and appreciating more than ever being far away from it. when I'm done in my school program out here in Seattle we are moving back to Chicago. But every so often I wonder what things would be like if I had stayed down there.
I grew up in the south but was always an outsider. I came from a mostly 'yankee' family and never had much of a southern accent so it was always a weird fit. Chicago wasn't home in the sense of having lived there, yet, but my family who were from Chicago talked about it so much that I knew it as the promised land. In a very passover way it was almost a "next year in Chicago" sort of idea. And so I wound up moving there. And when I'm done here we will go back to Chicago because it is home.
but so is the south I can never live in again.
Sometimes I feel like Quentin Compson at the end of Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom. Shreve asks him why he hates the south and he says, "I don't hate it" over and over. He loves it so much he hates it. It is odd to both so drawn to a place and to want to stay as far away from it as possible.
I had a few conversations with Willie Morris when he was in residence at Ole Miss sometime around 1990 or so. In one of those conversations I told him that I was probably going to look in Jackson for a job, but I might look out of state, too, and he said to me, "Mississippi is a great place to have fond memories of." At the time I didn't get what he was saying.
Now I do.
Oh, man, Dennis!! Do you know how many times I've said "Memphis is a great place to be FROM!!"?
But there is no place like the South. I've lived in LA and DC (which, no matter what anyone tells you, is NOT Southern), and I'm glad to be back in the land of good BBQ and sweet tea.
It helps that I live in a progressive enclave (though NC is, of course, still very conservative), and that I have a wonderful bishop. I'm not sure I could function if those things were not true...
there is a soul food restaurant called Poseys here in Bremerton, WA, of all places. The owner and cook is a southerner and she cooks her family's African American and southern recipes. it looks like she is having trouble keeping business going because I don't think people out here on the Olympic peninsula of Washington get her food. The bbq is just ok. But her collard greens and blackeyed peas are the best.
I think I'm going to go there for lunch today. Maybe she'll have some pecan pie. this is such a different world out here that it is nice to have such a place around.
Not only is DC not Southern, but contrary to what they, or anyone else, claims, Texas is not Southern, either. They are Western, or whatever, but they are not ours. Though one often hears of criminals who ran there from Georgia, or mentally defective sorts bundled off by the family to "make their own way out West." These seem to be the settlers of a 100 years or so ago.
Courtesy cyber pub-crawl, inspired by the Clumber business. Are you certain that your loathing of mustard barbecue is not connected to the number of arch-"asserters" who live in or close to the SC mustard belt?
When I moved here in the mid-70's, a fellow-Brit colleague terminated a co-worker's hymn of praise to mustard -based barbecue with the observation that "South Carolina barbecue looks and smells like dog vomit".
I will try to take to heart your advice on Lewis, who thus far figures in my consciousness only in the phrase "so far in the closet...." etc.
Love.
Dennis--how was the pie?
Mark--I totally agree with you about Texas. Florida ain't Southern either. And don't even get me STARTED on people who live in Maryland and claim they are Southern. (Living on the Eastern Shore and flying a confederate flag makes you an asshole, not a Southerner.)
Lapinbizarre---how do I love your name? Let me count the ways...
Are you certain that your loathing of mustard barbecue is not connected to the number of arch-"asserters" who live in or close to the SC mustard belt?
Probably my ex-husband has more to do with it than Kendall Harmon. We disagreed on BBQ, money, pets, and what constituted sufficient intimacy in a marriage. I should have realized the the BBQ abomination was a harbinger of things to come...
Though I confess Kendall has ruined my enjoyment of Pawley's Island---where we used to spend family holidays when my son was an infant. Every time I drive past the sign for the Pawley's Island church I feel the need to cross myself and mutter invocations against the devil...
And I wonder if it means anything that this throw-away post has gotten more comments than any of my serious entries over which I sweated blood before I posted them?
Maybe it does, mebee not. It wasn't the Rev'd Dr. Harmon I had in mind (regardless of his own stance he frequently has an encouragingly broad choice of links on his page) so much as the fair Sarah Hey, up in Greenville who, poor dear, is going to do herself an injury if she doesn't calm things down a bit and take it easy for a while. Take a powder, love.
The Pawley's Island business is interesting, because it pitted the "reasserter" diocesan power structure - Salmon & Co. - fighting in the interests of the Episcopal Church against a secessionist group. It gives few indications for the shape of things to come, because the case was seriously, but very interestingly muddied by the fact that the Pawley's Island property was deeded to trustees, rather than to a congregation or religious group, by the terms of a pre-revolutionary - and therefore pre-Episcopal Church - will or gift (forget which).
Indications are that a diocesan secessionist group would not get most properties unless there were odd circumstances of this nature.
oh, there are parts of Florida and Texas and Maryland that are quite Southern.
Maybe not the whole state. But you can't tell me that places like Destin, Pensacola, and East Texas aren't quite southern in how they live in the past, are under the spell of Baptist preachers, and eat what we would consider to be classically southern foods. (and food and religion are the real marks when we want to see the boundaries of a region, I think).
I am going to try and find one of those (where is you accent from) quizzes that are online. That might be a fun game to play!
(there was no pecan pie, by the way)
(Living on the Eastern Shore and flying a confederate flag makes you an asshole, not a Southerner.)
Thank you, Wormwood's Doxy! I hope I have permission to use that!
the Doxy said, "Dennis--I'm glad to see that someone knows how to pronounce "pecan" correctly! ;-)"
Indeed. People who call 'em "pee-cans" shouldn't be allowed to have any!
But I have to strongly disagree that (at least some) Texans are not Southerners. If you're from any part of my home state from the Louisiana / Arkansas border, west to Austin, and south of approx Waco, then you are most certainly Southern. Growing up in Austin in the 1960's, the local culture was as Southern as anything you could find. As was my family, which like many in that part of the state, came to Texas from the southern U.S. in the 19th cent. (Virginia, in my case).
And since we're talkin' barbeque here, the center of the Universe for Texas-style barbeque is near my hometown in towns like Elgin & Lockhart, TX.
Try places like Black's BBQ or the Kreuz Market in Lockhart if you're ever in that neck of the woods and you'll come away happy :)
Dennis--sorry about the pie. That bites.
Dennis and David--I'm willing to let anyone you vouch for PERSONALLY into the Southern club. Otherwise, I am inclined to believe that most residents of Florida are snowbirds, and that Texas should be its own country.
(I do, however, take note of your restaurant suggestions, David---though I just know you are going to try and tell me that BBQ can be made out of beef and then I will have to revoke your posting privileges here. ;-)
Mark--be my guest. Though I suspect if it gets out, I will have to enable comment moderation on the blog and delete obscene e-mails from the assholes with the Confederate flags...but, as my next post considers, we are apparently called to suffer for the good of others, so I'll take one for the team if necessary.
Oh, and Dennis---my ex says "pee-can."
Nuff said.
We say "pee-can" in the UK, at least we did in my day. MP can speak to current practice. "Pi-Kaan" fell into a category of pronunciation termed "refeened" by the polite, "piss-elegant" by the less polite. The rule applies to planets known as "You-Ran-Us".
Lapinbizarre---You just have to come over here and let us teach you how to speak properly. ;-)
As for the "refeened" thing---my mother is married to a Brit. Her name has a short "i" in the middle, but he pronounces it as if it were a long "e." He's a lovely man, but that drives me crazy! Don't know how/why she stands it...
And David--my apologies. It was your comment about "puh-kahns" to which I was referring, but I mistakenly typed Dennis' name.
That means you get one free pass on the BBQ beef thing... ;-)
Honey, I'm just down the road from you in Columbia.
Well come on over! Sharecropper is not too far from here, and I'm sure there are others. We could find a good BBQ joint (wonder if any of them have wireless access?) and have a mini-blogger convention.
Maybe Kendall and Sarah would join us to make up a four at bridge? (A game, he added, that I have not played in more than a quarter of a century.)
Apropos of liturgical dance:
http://www.dioceseofwenchoster.co.uk/hymnal/hymnstore/HM&A142.htm
Sorry, hon - but Texas barbeque is beef :) Beef brisket, to be precise, tho' they make some killer smoked pork sausage in Elgin, TX.
But I'm certainly willing to admit that the pork BBQ from Tenn., the Carolinas, etc... is awfully good, too!
Also note that the original "barbeque" came from the Spanish barbacoa, which is smoked, slow-cooked cabrito (i.e. young goat).
It's actually quite good, but again different from the other kinds of 'que.
Sandra Cisneros is one of my faaaaaaaaaaavorite people.
e.e. cummings and Sharon Olds, too.
I suppose this would not be the right place to suggest that one can praise God with music written outside of the 18th and 19th century. That admitting a song with a beat might attract equally devout souls?
I'm a stranger in these parts...
Of course you can suggest that, Jill!
I see preferences for worship styles as pretty much like food preferences. I cannot abide the smell or taste of cabbage--but it's a good, healthful food. I just prefer other vegetables. My dislike of cabbage is no commentary on other people's preference for it.
I know it's a cliche, but it's true---it would be a boring world if we all liked the same things.
Pax,
Doxy
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